


Sometimes, it's the Truth

by peterparkr



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It, Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hurt/Comfort, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Tony Stark Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-28 01:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20055787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterparkr/pseuds/peterparkr
Summary: “Does it get easy?”Tony sighs. He’s the wrong person to ask. Sometimes, he’s sure that the rumors about him sabotaging himself are true because it has never once gotten easier. Not after he built that first suit, not after he joined some approximation of a superhero team, and certainly not now—trying to beat the same demons that he faces out of a kid less than half his age.





	Sometimes, it's the Truth

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](https://percys.co.vu/post/186309852191/does-it-get-easy-what-do-you-want-me-to-say-lie) post! And the corresponding scene from Buffy!
> 
> Can be seen as a companion to [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20014624) but can also be read alone.

It’s been a few months since the airplane incident with the Vulture guy (which Tony will admit was a terrible judgement call on his part—to be fair, this is his first go at the mentoring a super-kid thing, but still, totally his fault), when Peter shows up at the compound. He doesn’t even notice the kid at first, just goes about his morning—fills the coffee pot, notes that Rhodey ate the last of their cheerios.

When he sees the figure in his peripheral, his heart stutter-jumps in his chest. His teeth grind together and he grips the counter. He  _ hates _ that feeling. It reminds him of open-heart surgery and stolen arc reactors and panic attacks. 

“Well, if it isn’t everyone’s favorite friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.” He works to make the cadence right, just enough good-natured humor paired with a little disdain and a lot of sarcasm so that no one will realize that he’s just a teeny bit freaked out. “To what do I owe this complete and utter pleasure at 6 AM, on a Saturday, no less?”

It’s the wrong move. Peter’s face crumples, just for a second; he quickly builds it back into shape. Tony needs to work on changing his default defense tone to match his audience. For the kid, he should dial up the good-natured side of the humor.

Tony decides to meet him on his teenage level. “What’s up, Peter?”

“Nothing much,” he mumbles.

“Avengers are contractually bound to tell me everything.”

That coaxes out a smile. “Not an Avenger, remember?”

How could he forget? Stood up at his own press conference. But Tony doesn’t answer. He’s pretty sure this is the part where he needs to give Peter time to say more if he wants to.

“Do you—sleep?”

Tony feels his eyes start to widen and carefully pins them in place. Visible reactions spook people, especially teenage vigilantes.

“Not too much, you?” 

Tony turns to pour his coffee. It’s not a serious conversation if there isn’t a lot of dramatic eye contact. At least, that’s what he hopes Peter thinks.

“Same.”

“Any particular reason? I bet you could guess some of mine.” Tony flashes a smile—the one that Rhodey says makes him look sleazy and Pepper says makes him look dead inside, but the news sites have always loved.

“I don’t know—I guess the plane thing. Mostly the building, um, crushing me.”

Tony takes a long sip of the coffee. It’s too hot so he surreptitiously spits most of it back into his cup. He swallows the rest hard. That’s all on him. He hadn’t even known about the building. 

He places the mug back down. His whole shtick with the kid is supposed to prevent him from taking real damage. Instead, Tony’s managed to traumatize him in less than a year. It doesn’t bode well for how this is going to end.

“It’s—yeah.” Eloquent. “Sleeping’s hard. The hero gig is hard in the beginning.”

“Does it get easy?”

Tony sighs. He’s the wrong person to ask. Sometimes, he’s sure that the rumors about him sabotaging himself are true because it has never once gotten easier. Not after he built that first suit, not after he joined some approximation of a superhero team, and certainly not now—trying to beat the same demons that he faces out of a kid less than half his age.

“What do you want me to say?”

Peter shrugs. “Lie to me.”

Tony exhales a surprised laugh. That, he can do. He has years of practice.

“Yes, it’s terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true. The bad guys are easily distinguishable by their pointy horns and we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies and everyone lives happily ever after.”

* * *

He’d made the design soon after he got back from Titan. If you can’t get the gauntlet off the hand, you take the stones off the gauntlet— _ stupid _ that he hadn’t thought of it beforehand. 

He never dreamed he’d get the chance to use it.

The stone’s energy surges through the suit, and through him. For some reason, the lie to Peter comes to mind. Maybe it was always meant to come down to this.

* * *

_ (It’s terribly simple.) _

It’s so fucking simple. Tony downs the shot that’s handed to him. It’s a performance, really. His head rolls back so far that his neck cracks. He snaps back into an upright position, shoving both hands in the air, the glass in one, two fingers up on the other.

“World peace,” he slurs.

Always the same thing. It’s so simple—always makes them laugh.

One guy—Matt, but Tony will call him Mike (he never forgets a face, but it’s beneficial to pretend to, no use letting them get comfortable—the comfortable take advantage) has a baseball bat. Why does he have a baseball bat? 

Matt-Mike spreads his legs wide, hoists the bat onto his shoulder. Tony pitches the shot glass, ends in a bowling pose, holds it until everyone notices and roars. The glass shatters against the wall behind him.

The flinch comes a few seconds too late, followed by thoughts of Howard and broken bottles. God, he’s really wasted if his brain isn’t automatically filtering out any of  _ that. _

He waits a few minutes, they wouldn’t make the connection anyway, but just in case, before announcing that he needs to take a dump. Raucous laughter.

People always say they never know how drunk they are until they’re alone in a bathroom. Tony always rolls his eyes when it’s brought up again, and again. It’s so painfully obvious why. It’s the mirror. The human brain understands what it can see more than what it can’t.

And the mirror confirms that Tony is wrecked. His eyes are bloodshot slits with deep, dark gouges underneath. His hair is damp with sweat, slicked but not in a boyish, charming way—in a way that suggests he hasn’t showered in weeks. There are countless dark patches on his shirt. Whether each is from sweat or booze is indistinguishable.

He tries on a smile. All it does is show his teeth.

It doesn’t matter. On to the next. Keep it breezy.

He struggles a little with the door handle, considers just taking the whole thing off it’s jams. But, eventually he gets the hang of it. He only bumps the frame a little on his way through.

“They said you were in there.”  _ Rhodey. _

His eyes flash down over Tony’s rumpled and grimey shirt. When they come back up, there’s disappointment there, some thinly veiled annoyance and concern.

Tony pretends he can’t see it. “Rhodey, honey,  _ darling. _ Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

“I wasn’t. Until you called me about an hour ago freaking out because you didn’t know where you were and wanted to go home.”

He doesn’t remember that. It doesn’t sound like something he would ever say out loud. Starks don’t ‘freak out’ and if they did they wouldn’t show it. He must have been gone.

“Oops.” Breezy, simple. “Sorry, Jimbo, must’ve blacked.”

Rhodey sighs. “We’re not in college anymore, Tones.”

No, shit. He’s in dress pants, a button up. These are industry people, this is  _ business. _ But they do want the same things out of him that the frat boys always did.

“Your mind,” he says. “Never ceases to amaze me.”

Rhodey grips Tony’s shoulder, starts dragging him towards an exit. It’s so military, the way he pushes past people with stoic nods. When did he become so practical, so mature? He’s going to leave Tony behind.

“Rhodey, Rhodey, Rhodes,” Tony mumbles. “Stop, ‘m fine.”

“No you’re not.”

( _ It’s never been simple.) _

* * *

_ (The good guys are always stalwart and true.) _

Ultron. Sekovia. Charlie Spencer. It’s a loop in his head of  _ his fault, his fault, his fault. _

And Steve’s not listening. The Accords aren’t perfect but if they all play along, that can be rectified. The most important thing is that they’re kept in check. They need to be regulated—_Tony_ needs to be regulated. Otherwise he's the same as he was before with the weapons—wreaking havoc on people’s lives without losing a wink of sleep.

The answer isn’t to fight Steve’s side at an airport. That much is clear as soon as it escalates to a full-fledged battle. 

Tony had thought it would be a skirmish at most—more of a who’s got the bigger stick sort of thing, who’s going to back down first. He had been naïve, should have known better. Him and Steve are both too stubborn to ever give in and they both believe they’re right which makes the situation doubly dangerous—downright volatile. 

Rhodey pays the price for his stupidity.

And it was never meant to end with good guys in cages.

Looks like one of them will be giving in, after all. He feels Howard rolling in his grave.

Siberia’s cold but Steve’s face is warm when he realizes that Tony’s there as a friend. Part of him hates how much Captain America’s approval means to him, the other part is just happy that this means the team can still be salvaged.

Until it can’t because their leader is a  _ liar _ . Just like Obadiah and Fury and Natasha and everyone else. And that was his  _ mom  _ with the Winter Soldier’s hand around her throat and how could Steve have kept this a secret and how does a sane person react to this information?

It doesn’t really matter because nobody’s ever called Tony stable.

When it’s over, all he can do is gag on the bile in his throat and stare at the scratched shield. 

_ (The good guys are just as screwed up as everyone else.) _

* * *

_ (The bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy ears.) _

When his dad yells and his mom is silent, Tony goes to Uncle Obie.

“You know he’s only hard on you because he sees all your potential, short stack, just like I do.”

It’s never because Howard loves _ him _ , just his aptitude and future prospects.

“Funny way of showing it.” He feels hot and splotchy because he’s angry, not because he’s about to cry. 

“So tell me what’s happening.” Obie claps a hand around his neck. “What’s the latest invention from the  _ greatest _ Stark mind?”

Obie is always interested in his creations. His mom usually just nods before going back to her magazines. His dad doesn’t even look up, if he answers, it’s a shout. The only other person who ever cares about them is Jarvis.

“Made an RC helicopter, from scratch.” He bounces on his toes a bit. “Like Schluter’s. I attached some of my dad’s old camera parts, too. It can take pictures.”

Obie’s face breaks into a grin. “That’s—incredible. Fucking incredible. How old are you, now?”

Tony beams, stands up as straight and tall as he can. “Nine.”

“You’re going to change the world, Tony. I can’t wait to see it.”

In that moment, he thinks he could. He feels smart, resourceful, important—all the things Howard expects him to be but has never come close to telling him that he is.

Obie keeps smiling down at Tony, unwavering.

Thirty-some years later, the same man is still above him, this time leering. Tony’s heart is sputtering, stopping and starting, because it’s under siege with its moat and high walls stripped away.

Even if he wasn’t paralyzed, he doesn’t think he’d be able to move.

_ (The bad guys can be hard to spot and difficult to lose.) _

* * *

_ (And we always defeat them and save the day.) _

Peter—pieces of Peter fall through his fingertips. He holds the little bits he manages to keep close to his face.

He’d told them. He’d told them all that they would lose—that one day the threat would be too big for a couple of guys with scrappy attitudes and unresolved trauma to handle.

It’s easier to focus the anger on them than to turn it inward. If he’s being honest, it’s his fault. He said it himself—this was bound to happen eventually. For all his big talk about being a futurist, he hadn’t been able to stop it. That’s all he is really, the talk—all bark, no bite, cheap trick, cheesy one-liner.

“Stark.”

Of course it’s only him and knock-off avatar.

“Don’t.” The word blows some of Peter out of his hands. 

“We need to fix the ship.”

“Stop it, STOP!” He stands and the last of Peter falls. “Shut the fuck up.”

He flexes his shaking hands, balls them into fists. There’s a noose around his heart and it’s squeezing and this is usually the part where he bolts but there’s nowhere to go. He can’t run from space on an alien planet and he definitely can’t hide from the half-dead universe.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” It’s mechanical, monotone. She’s clearly not a people person, not too in touch with the emotional side. That’s probably for the best.

“Yeah, well.” Time to suit up, but the Tony Stark persona rather than the Iron Man armor. “Not my loss—didn’t really know him. His aunt will kill me though. If she’s still, you know, around.”

Her face twitches. “He seemed to know you.”

She should have stabbed him with her pointy space knives. That would have the same effect. She’s just poking different kinds of holes.

“We can’t stay here,” she tries again. “We need to—“

“Why not? Why not stay here? What’s the point?” His voice loses the heat halfway through.

Nebula looks thoughtful. “I would like to kill Thanos.”

She doesn’t even realize that it’s the right thing to say, probably the only words that would have worked. If she’d said anything about fixing it or getting them back or their distinct lack of survival resources on this planet, he wouldn’t have moved.

_ (Everybody loses.) _

* * *

_ (No one ever dies.) _

His parents in the car. No wait, not exactly, not anymore. His parents by the Winter Soldier.

Yinsen in that cave. If he’d just stuck to the plan they could have made it. But he didn’t, he’d made the choice to save Tony’s life.  _ Don’t waste it.  _ He tries not to, every single moment. Some days are easier than others.

There was Obadiah, who he tries to hate instead of mourn. In the end he does both, but also, somehow, neither.

Then Phil on the helicarrier. It wasn’t real, but it hurt like it was. 

Ellen Brandt, who wasn’t exactly an Obie. The trust didn’t run quite as deep, but there’d still been a history there. And then she’d dragged Pepper into danger. In the end, Ellen had come around, but just as soon, she was gone.

He’d lost Jarvis, the person, and Jarvis, the program. It sounds ridiculous, but Tony’s not sure which was worse. The second felt like losing the first all over.

There was the Maximoff kid on Sekovia and King T’Chaka at the signing of the Accords and every civilian casualty Tony ever had any part in.

Then, it was half the universe.

And now there’s someone missing and Clint is shaking his head.

It’s not fair. Nat spent most of her life trying to better herself and the world. She’s the one who continued the fight, even after five years. She’s Morgan’s godmother. 

Tony reminds himself that it very rarely is. 

“Do we know if she had a family?”

It’s a stupid question. Tony knows the answer, but he has to fill the silence with something. He’s always been terrible at reactions—so caught between what he assumes people want him to do, what he feels, and what he thinks. When the call about his parents came he had just said “okay”, followed by, “I can probably fix the car.”

“Yeah, us,” Steve says.

Tony wants to smack him because  _ they all know that.  _ But, he’s the one who asked.

Maybe, one day, he’ll finally get the hang of this.

_ (Everyone dies, eventually.) _

* * *

_ (And everyone lives happily ever after.)  _

Tony had been holding out on that one. He thought he’d found some warped version of it over the last five years. He should have known that it could never end on some sort of middle ground—a halfway happy. With him, it’s always all or nothing. He doesn’t do things by halves.

Neither does Thanos. “I am inevitable!”

The look on his face when nothing happens is delicious. 

“And I—”

He pauses. He thinks of Morgan and Pepper. They’d be sad, sure, but Pepper’s the most capable person on the planet. They’d work it out. They’d have Rhodey and Happy and maybe Peter. Tony hopes that they’d all come together if he does this. He thinks of all the people who are back now—not just on earth, but across the universe. He thinks of happy endings and shitty outcomes and what people deserve versus what people get. And what  _ does _ he deserve, anyway? He thinks of the message he’d recording and  _ everybody wants a happy ending, right? but it doesn’t always roll that way,  _ but god, he wants it to. He thinks of all the people who told him this was the way it was always destined to end for him. He’s self-destructive at his very core—with the alcohol, with the suits, with stupid decisions and sacrifice plays, the inability to stop.

Peter’s head sticks up from behind a piece of rubble. He looks beat up and tired, and like if Tony snaps it might destroy him. 

And so Tony reaches deep. This would be a fitting destiny, but maybe it doesn’t have to be. Maybe it’s not all doom and gloom, maybe life isn’t always one great tragedy after another. He decides that he deserves a chance to find out. After all, he’s always liked to prove people wrong. This could be his finest trick yet. Maybe, the greatest  _ fuck you _ to everyone who’s doubted his character and his intentions, everyone who’s predicted that one day he’d burn out by his own flame, is just to live.  _ Is this the last act of defiance of the great Tony Stark? _

He flies up with the stones, as high as he can go.

  
  
  
  


Peter’s staying the night at the cabin. It’s a thing he does now, sometimes. He has a room here, after all, and Morgan adores him.

He’s curled up on a chair a few feet away. His eyes are closed but Tony doesn’t think he’s sleeping.

Morgan’s sitting on Tony’s lap, helping him turn the pages of the book he’s reading to her. She mouths the words along with him as he says them.

“And they all lived happily ever after,” he finishes.

Tony tries to close the book, but Morgan throws her hand inside to keep it open.

“What comes after?” she asks.

He looks down at her, kisses her forehead. “What do you mean, sweetheart?”

She looks perplexed, forehead scrunched up and nose wrinkled. Her little index finger (Tony will never get over how tiny, he never wants it to grow, except that he does because when it’s larger it won’t be so easy to break) points at the final words of the book.

“They always end ‘happily ever after’.” She taps on each word as she says it. “What comes after that?”

“It’s a bit of a lie, Morgan. There’s always going to be more conflict—sometimes the princess loses the prince or an even bigger dragon visits the castle. But the author can’t write forever, so it’s just something they say to wrap it up in one of the odd moments when everyone’s happy.”

The words tumble fast out of Peter. He turns red after the last one hits the air and looks at Tony guiltily. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.” 

_ In front of her, _ he mouths over Morgan’s head.

Tony just hates that Peter thinks it.

“Say whatever you want, Pete, but I respectfully disagree.” They’re both looking at him with the same intent expression. “Sometimes, the author doesn’t write the rest because it’s so mind-numbingly boring. The guy—or lady—who used to fly around slaying monsters and saving people settles down. They wash the dishes, do laundry, work on the lawn, sometimes read their kids a bedtime story.”

Peter smiles at the carpet at the use of kids, plural. When he looks back up, his eyes are a bit shiny.

“It would be beyond dull to read about, but this former hero, they’re so very, very content, hence the ‘happily ever after’.” Tony shrugs. “Sure, there’ll be some conflict, but nothing worth writing about. Nothing like that final battle they won.”

Tony moves Morgan’s hand out of the book. He closes it and places it to the side, hugging her close. Peter looks like his mind is still far away, trying to comprehend the words. Tony’s not worried, the kid will get there eventually. Peter’s still in the slaying monsters part.

Pepper enters the room with a smile, hands a mug to Peter, and slots herself into the couch with Tony and Morgan. 

“Good story?” she asks.

Morgan nods vigorously. 

The room is warm and full. Tony never thought he’d be one of the lucky ones—it had always seemed so unattainable. It almost feels like an out-of-body experience, like he’s watching himself and his family from above.

_ Would you look at that _ , he thinks,  _ they all lived happily ever after. _

_ (Sometimes, it’s the truth.) _

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Sorry if the ending is too cheesy but I think it's what Tony deserves haha
> 
> Find me on [tumblr!](https://peterparkrr.tumblr.com)


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